Survey of Japanese Young Adults Shows Preference for Twitter, Facebook

We recently looked at a survey of Japanese smartphone users which gave a general indication of what kinds of applications people in the country preferred. That particular poll showed NHN Japan’s Line was the app of choice, but more traditional social apps like Facebook and Twitter were also mentioned prominently. In order to get a better idea of which social services Japan prefers in general (not just on smartphones), it might be useful to also consider another recent survey.

This one was conducted by Comnico, Nifty, and Lifemedia, who polled 776 young adults, specifically those in the 19 to 20 demographic. When asked which social service they use most, 42.5 percent of respondents said it was Twitter. The answer skews even more towards Twitter among females in the polling group, with 51.5 percent voting for the popular microblog. Among both men and women, Line came second and Facebook third.

from Comnico, with some translations added by me

But as we have said before on this blog, Facebook’s momentum in Japan shouldn’t be underestimated. For the survey in question, 41.3 percent of respondents said that Facebook (NASDAQ:FB ) is the network which they would most like to try in the future, citing its usefulness for job hunting and for connecting with people around the world. SocialBakers currently has Japan’s Facebook population at about 16.9 million, which is about 13 percent of the population.

As with all surveys we can’t really place too much weight in any single poll. But I thought we’d share this one, in the interests of getting a little bit closer to an accurate understanding of the big picture.